UJf. 

Trivia 



IdganIkrsall Smith 




BookJdSH 



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CoiJyrightK"_/22/. 



COWRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



MORE 
TRIVIA 



By 
LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH 

AUTHOR OF "TRIVIA" 



m 



NEW YORK 

HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY 
1921 






^^^ 



COPYRIGHT, I92I, BY 
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. 



NOV -3 1921 



••RINTEB IN THB U. •. A ■¥ 

THR QUINN ft BODEN COMPANY 

BAHWAY N. 4. 



0)C1.A627548 



CONTENTS 

A GREETING ix 

REASSURANCE 3 

THE GREAT ADVENTURE 4 

THE BEATIFIC VISION 5 

FACES 6 

THE OBSERVER 7 

CHAOS 8 

THE GHOST P 

THE HOUR-GLASS lO 

THE LATCHKEY 11 

GOOD PRACTICE 12 

EVASION 13 

dining out 14 
what's wrong 15 
at solemn music 17 

THE GOAT 18 

SELF-CONTROL 19 

THE COMMUNION OF SOULS 2o 

WAXWORKS 21 

ADJECTIVES 22 

WHERE? 23 

IN THE STREET 2^ 

THE ABBEY AT NIGHT 25 

DESPERANCE 26 

CHAIRS 27 

A GRIEVANCE 28 

THE MOON 29 

iii 



CONTENTS 

LONGEVITY 3o 

IN THE BUS 31 

JUSTIFICATION 32 

THE SAYING OF A PERSIAN POET 33 

MONOTONY 34 

DAYDREAM 35 

PROVIDENCE 36 

ACTION 37 

WAITING 38 

THE WRONG WORD 4o 

IONS 4I 

A FIGURE OF SPEECH 42 

A SLANDER 43 

SYNTHESIS 44 

THE AGE 45 

COMFORT 46 

APPEARANCE AND REALITY 47 

LONELINESS 48 

THE WELSH HARP 49 

MISAPPREHENSION 51 

THE LIFT 52 

sloane street 53 
regent's park 54 
the aviary 55 
ST. John's wood 56 

THE garden SUBURB 57 
SUNDAY CALLS 59 
AN ANOMALY 6o 

iv 



CONTENTS 

THE LISTENER 61 

ABOVE THE CLOUDS 62 

THE BUBBLE 63 

CAUTION 64 

DESIRES 65 

MOMENTS 66 

THE EPITAPH 67 

INTERRUPTION 68 

THE EAR-TRUMPET 7o 

GUILT 71 

CADOGAN GARDENS 72 

THE RESCUE 73 

CHARM 74 

CARAVANS 75 

THE SUBURBS 76 

THE CONCERTO 77 

SOMEWHERE 78 

THE PLATITUDE 79 

THE FETISH 8o 

THE ECHO 81 

THE SCAVENGER 82 

THE HOT-BED 83 

APHASIA 84 

MAGIC 85 

MRS. BACKE 86 

WHISKERS 87 

THE SPELLING LESSON 88 

JEUNESSE 89 

V 



CONTENTS 

HANGING ON 9o 

SUPERANNUATION 91 

AT THE CLUB 92 

DELAY 93 

SMILES 94 

THE DAWN 95 

THE PEAR 96 

INSOMNIA 97 

READING PHILOSOPHY 98 

MORAL TRIUMPH 99 

A VOW loo 

THE SPRINGS OF ACTION lol 

IN THE CAGE lo2 

SHRINKAGE lo3 

VOICES lo4 

EVANESCENCE lo5 

COMPLACENCY I06 

MY PORTRAIT lo7 

THE RATIONALIST I08 

THOUGHTS lo9 

PHRASES llo 

DISENCHANTMENT 111 

ASK ME NO MORE 112 

FAME 113 

NEWS ITEMS 114 

JOY 115 

IN ARCADY 116 

WORRIES 117 

vi 



CONTENTS 

THINGS TO WRITE 118 

PROPERTY IIQ 

IN A FIX 120 
-VERTIGO 122 

THE EVIL EYE 123 

THE EPITHET 124 

THE GARDEN PARTY 125 
iWELTSCHMERZ 126 

BOGEYS 127 

LIFE-ENHANCEMENT 129 

ECLIPSE 130 

THE PYRAMID 131 

THE FULL MOON 132 

LUTON 133 

THE DANGER OF GOING TO CHURCH 134 

THE SONNET 136 

WELTANSCHAUUNG 137 

THE ALIEN 138 

HYPOTHESES 139 

THE ARGUMENT 140 



vu 



A GREETING ^ 

' T T 7 HAT funny clothes you wear, dear 
W Readers! And your hats! The 
thought of your hats does make me laugh. 
And I think your sex-theories quite horrid.' 

Thus across the void of Time I send, with 
a wave of my hand, a greeting to that quaint, 
remote, outlandish, unborn people whom we 
call Posterity, and whom I, like other very 
great writers, claim as my readers — urging 
them to hurry up and get born, that they may 
have the pleasure of reading ' More Trivia.' 



MORE 
TRIVIA 



REASSURANCE- 

I LOOK at my overcoat and my hat hanging 
in the hall with reassurance; for although 
I go out of doors with one individuality to-day, 
when yesterday I had quite another, yet my 
clothes keep my various selves buttoned up to- 
gether, and enable all these otherwise irrecon- 
cilable aggregates of psychological phenomena 
to pass themselves off as one person. 



THE GREAT ADVENTURE 



-^ 



BEFORE opening the front-door I paused, 
for a moment of profound consideration. 

Dim-lit, shadowy, full of menace and un« 
imaginable chances, stretched all around my 
door the many-peopled streets. I could hear, 
ominous and muffled, the tides of multitudinous 
traffic, sounding along their ways. Was I 
equipped for the navigation of those waters, 
armed and ready to adventure out into that 
dangerous world again? 

Gloves? Money? Cigarettes? Matches? 
Yes; and I had an umbrella for its tempests, 
and a latchkey for my safe return. 



THE BEATIFIC VISION 

SHOVING and pushing, and shoved and 
pushed, a dishonoured bag of bones about 
London, or carted like a herring in a box 
through tunnels in the clay beneath it, as I 
bump my head in a bus, or hang, half-suffo- 
cated, from a greasy strap in the Underground, 
I dream, like other Idealists and Saints and 
Social Thinkers, of a better world than this, 
a world that might be, a City of Heaven 
brought down at last to earth. 

One footman flings open the portals of my 
palace in that New Jerusalem for me; another 
unrolls a path of velvet to the enormous motor 
which floats me, swift and silent, through the 
city traffic — I leaning back like God on hal- 
lowed cushions, smoking a big cigar. 



FACES ' 

ALMOST always the streets are full of 
dreary-looking people; sometimes for 
weeks on end the poor face-hunter returns un- 
blest from his expeditions, with no provision 
with which to replenish his daydream-larder. 

Then one day the plenty is all too great; 
there are Princesses at the street-crossings, 
Queens in the taxi-cabs, Beings fair as the day- 
spring on the tops of busses; and the Gods 
themselves can be seen promenading up and 
down Piccadilly. 



s THE OBSERVERS 

TALK of ants! It's the precise habits, the 
incredible proceedings of human insects I 
like to note and study. 

Walking to-day, like a stranger dropped upon 
this planet, towards Victoria, I chanced to see a 
female of this species, a certain Mrs. Jones of 
my acquaintance, approaching from the oppo- 
site direction. Immediately I found myself 
performing the oddest set of movements and 
manoeuvres. I straightened my back and sim- 
pered, I lifted my hat in the air; and then, seiz- 
ing the paw of this female, I moved it up and 
down several times, giving utterance to a set 
formula of articulated sounds. 

These anthropological gestures and vocalisa- 
tions, and my automatic performance of them, 
reminded me that it was after all from inside 
one of them, that I was observing these Bipeds. 



CHAOS 

PUNCTUAL, commonplace, keeping all 
appointments, as I go my round in the 
obvious world, a bit of Chaos and old Night 
seems to linger on inside me; a dark bewilder- 
ment of mind, a nebulous sea of speculation, a 
looming of shadowy universes out of nothing, 
and their collapse, as in a dream. 



^ THE GHOST 

WHEN people talk of Ghosts and Haunt- 
ings, I never mention the Apparition 
by which I am pestered, the Phantom that 
shadows me about the streets, the image or 
spectre, so familiar, so like myself, and yet so 
abhorrent, which lurks in the plate-glass of 
shop-windows, or leaps out of mirrors to way- 
lay me. 



THE HOUR-GLASS 

AT the corner of Oakley Street I stopped 
for a moment's chat with my neighbour, 
Mrs. Wheble, who was waiting there for a bus. 

' Do tell me,' she asked, ' what you have got 
in that odd-looking parcel? ' 

' It's an hour-glass,' I said, taking it out of 
its paper wrapping. ' I saw it in a shop in the 
King's Road. I've always wanted an hour-glass 
to measure time by. What a mystery Time 
really is, when you think of it! See, the sands 
are running now while we are talking. I've got 
here in my hand the most potent, the most 
enigmatic, the most fleeting of all essences — 
Time, the sad cure for all our sorrows — but I 
say! There's your bus just starting. You'll 
miss it if you don't look out! ' 



10 



THE LATCHKEY4 

I WAS astonished, I was almost horror- 
struck by the sight of the New Moon at the 
end of the street. In bewilderment and Blake- 
like wonder I stood and gazed at it on my door- 
step. For what was I doing there; I, a 
wanderer, a pilgrim, a nomad of the desert, 
with no home save where the evening found me 
— what was my business on that doorstep; at 
what commonplace had the Moon caught me 
with a latchkey in my hand? 



II 



GOOD PRACTICE 

WE met in an omnibus last evening. ' And 
where are you going now? ' she asked, 
as she looked at me with amusement. 

' I am going, if the awful truth must be told, 
to dine in Grosvenor Square.' 

' Lord! ' she colloquially replied, * and what 
do you do that for? ' 

' I do it because I am invited. And besides,' 
I went on, ' let me remind you of what the 
Persian Mystics say of the Saints — that the 
Saints are sometimes rich, that God sometimes 
endows them with an outward show of wealth 
to hide them from the profane.' 

' Oh, does He? Hides them in Grosvenor 
Square? ' 

' Very well, then, I shall tell you the real 
truth; I shall tell you my real reason for going 
to dine there. Do you remember what Diogenes 
answered when they asked him why he had 
asked for a statue at the public expense? ' 

^ No; what did he say? ' 

' He said — but I must explain another time. 
I have to get off here. Good-night.' 

I paused, however, at the door of the bus. 
' He said,' I called iDack, ' " I am practising 
Disappointment." That — you know whom I 
mean? — was his answer.' 

12 



EVASIONS 

'XT THAT do you think of the Interna- 
W tional Situation? ' asked that foreign 
Countess, with her foreign, fascinating smile. 
Was she a Spy? I felt I must be careful. 
' What do I think? ' I evasively echoed; and 
then, carried away by the profound and melan- 
choly interest of this question, ' Think? ' I 
queried, ' do I ever really think? Is there 
anything inside my head but cotton-wool? How 
can I call myself a Thinker? What am I 
anyhow? ' I pursued the sad inquiry: ' A 
noodle, a pigwidgeon, a ninnyhammer, a 
bubble on the wave, a leaf in the wind, 
Madame! ' 



13 



< DINING OUT- 

WHEN I think of Etiquette and Funerals; 
when I consider the euphemisms and 
rites and conventions and various costumes with 
which we invest the acts of our animal 
existence; when I bear in mind how elegantly 
we eat our victuals, and remember the series of 
ablutions and preparations and salutations and 
exclamations and manipulations I went through 
when I dined out last evening, I reflect what 
creatures we are of ceremony; how elaborate, 
how pompous and polite a simian Species. 



14 



WHAT'S WRONG -^ 

FROM the corner of the dim, half-empty 
drawing-room where they sat, they could 
see, in a great mirror, the other dinner-guests 
linger and depart. But none of them were 
going on — what was the good? — to that evening 
party. They talked of satiety and disenchant- 
ment, of the wintry weather, of illness and old 
age and death. 

' But what really frightens me most in life,' 
said one of them, ' what gives me a kind of 
vertigo or shiver, is — it sounds absurd, but it's 
simply the horror of Space, I'epouvante side- 
rale, — the dismay of Infinity, the black abysses 
in the Milky Way, the silence of those eternal 
spaces beyond the furthest stars.' 

' But Time,' said another of the group, 
* surely Time is a worse nightmare. Think of 
it! the Past with never a beginning, the 
Future going on for ever and ever, and the 
little present in which we live for a second, 
twinkling between these two black abysses.' 

' What's wrong with me,' mused the third 
speaker, ' is that even the Present eludes me. I 
don't know what it really is; I can never catch 
the moment as it passes; I am always far ahead 
or far away behind, and always somewhere 
else. I am not really here now with you, 
IS 



WHAT'S WRONG 

though I am talking to you. And why should 
I go to the party? I shouldn't be there, either, 
if I went. My life is all reminiscence and 
anticipation — if you can call it life, if I am not 
rather a kind of ghost, haunting a past that has 
ceased to be, or a future that is still more 
shadowy and unreal. It's ghastly in a way, this 
exile and isolation. But why speak of it, after 
all?' 

They rose, and their images too were 
reflected in the great mirror, as they passed out 
of the drawing-room, and dispersed, each on his 
or her way, into the winter night. 



i6 



N 



AT SOLEMN MUSIC 

I SAT there, hating the exuberance of her 
bust, and her high-coloured wig. And how 
could I listen to music in the close proximity 
of those loud stockings ? 

Then our eyes met: in both of us the 
enchanted chord was touched; we both looked 
through the same window into Heaven. In 
that moment of musical, shared delight, my 
soul and the soul of that large lady, joined 
hands and sang like the morning stars together. 



17 



THE GOAT 

IN the midst of my anecdote a sudden 
misgiving chilled me — had I told them 
about this Goat before? And then as I talked 
there gaped upon me — abyss opening beneath 
abyss — a darker speculation: when goats are 
mentioned, do I automatically and always tell 
this story about the Goat at Portsmouth ? 



i8 



SELF-CONTROLt 

STILL I am not a pessimist, nor misan- 
thrope, nor grumbler; I bear it all, the 
burden of Public Affairs, the immensity of 
-Space, the brevity of Life, and the thought of 
the all-swallowing Grave — all this I put up with 
without impatience. I accept the common lot. 
And if now and then for a moment it seems too 
much; if I get my feet wet, or have to wait too 
long for tea, and my soul in these wanes of the 
moon cries out in French C'est finif I always 
answer Pazienza! in Italian — abbia la santa 
Pazienza! 



19 



THE COMMUNION OF SOULSt 

' QJ O of course I bought it! How could I help 
j^ buying it? ' Then, lifting the conversa- 
tion, as with Lady Hyslop one always lifts it, to 
a higher level, ' this notion of Free Will,' I went 
on, ' the notion, for instance, that I was free to 
buy or not to buy that rare edition, seems, when 
you think of it — at least to me it seems — a 
wretched notion really. I like to feel that I 
must follow the things I desire as — how shall 
I put it? — as the tide follows the Moon; that 
my actions are due to necessary causes; that 
the world inside me isn't a meaningless chaos, 
but a world of order, like the world outside, 
governed by beautiful laws, as the Stars are 
governed.' 

' Ah, how I love the Stars! ' murmured Lady 
Hyslop. ' What things they say to me! They 
are the pledges of lost recognitions; the prom- 
ise of ineffable mitigations.' 

' Mitigations? ' I gasped, feeling for a mo- 
ment a little giddy. But it didn't matter: 
always when we meet Lady Hyslop and I have 
the most wonderful conversations. 



20 



WAXWORKS 

*"rjUT one really never knows the Age one 
|j lives in. How interesting it would be,' I 
said to the lady next me, ' how I wish we could 
see ourselves as Posterity will see us! ' 

I have said it before, but on this occasion I 
was struck — almost thunder-struck — by my 
own remark. Like a rash enchanter, the spirit 
I had raised myself alarmed me. For a queer 
second I did see ourselves in that inevitable 
mirror, but cadaverous and out-of-date and 
/ palsied — a dusty set of old waxworks, 
simpering inanely in the lumber-room of Time. 

' Better to be forgotten at once! ' I ex- 
claimed, with an emphasis that seemed to sur- 
prise the lady next me. 



21 



ADJECTIVES T 

BUT why wasn't I born, alas, in an age of 
Adjectives; why can one no longer write 
of silver-shedding Tears and moon-tailed 
Peacocks, of eloquent Death, and the negro and 
star-enamelled Night? 



22 



WHERE? 

I WHO move and breathe and place one 
3 foot before the other, who watch the Moon 
wax and wane, and put off answering my 
letters, where shall I find the Bliss which 
dreams and blackbirds' voices promise, of 
which the waves whisper, and hand-organs in 
streets near Paddington faintly sing? 

Does it dwell in some island of the South 
Seas, or far oasis among deserts and gaunt 
mountains; or only in those immortal gardens 
imagined by Chinese poets beyond the great 
cold palaces of the Moon? 



23 



IN THE STREET-V 

THESE eye-encounters in the street, little 
touches of love-liking; faces that ask, as 
they pass, ' Are you my new lover? ' Shall I 
one day — in Park Lane or Oxford Street 
perhaps — see the unknown Face I dread and 
look for? 



24 



THE ABBEY AT NIGHT^ 

AND as at night I went past the Abbey, saw 
its wails towering high and solemn among 
the autumn stars, I pictured to myself the 
white population in the vast darkness of its 
interior — all that hushed people of Heroes — ; 
not dead, I would think them, but animated 
with a still kind of life; and at last, after all 
thdr intolerable toils, the sounding tumult of 
battle, and perilous seapaths, resting there, 
tranquil and satisfied and glorious, amid the 
epitaphs and allegorical figures of their tombs 
— those high-piled, trophied, shapeless Abbey 
tombs, that long ago they toiled for, and laid 
down their gallant Lives to win. 



25 



DESPERANCE-^ 

''VT'ES, as you say, life is so full of disap- 
y_ pointment, disillusion! More and more 
I ask myself, as I grow older, what is the good 
of it all? We dress, we go out to dinner,' I went 
on, ' but surely we walk in a vain show. How 
good this asparagus is! I often say asparagus 
is the most delicious of all vegetables. And 
yet, I don't know — when one thinks of fresh 
green peas. One can get tired of asparagus, as 
one can of strawberries — but tender peas I 
could eat forever. Then peaches, and melons; 
— and there are certain pears, too, that taste 
like heaven. One of my favourite daydreams 
for the long afternoon of life is to live alone, a 
formal, greedy, selfish old gentleman, in a 
square house, say in Devonshire, with a square 
garden, whose walls are covered with apricots 
and figs and peaches: and there are precious 
pears, too, of my own planting, on espaliers 
along the paths. I shall walk out with a gold- 
headed cane in the autumn sunshine, and just 
at the right moment I shall pick another pear. 
However, that isn't at all what I was going to 
say — ' 



26 



CHAIRS 

IN the streets of London there are door-bells 
I ring (I see myself ringing them); in 
certain houses there are chairs covered with 
chintz or cretonne in which I sit and talk about 
life, explaining often after tea what I think of 
it. 



27 



A GRIEVANCE 

THEY are all persons of elegant manners 
and spotless reputations; they seem to 
welcome my visits, and they listen to my 
anecdotes with unflinching attention. I have 
only one grievance against them; they will keep 
in their houses mawkish books full of stale 
epithets, which, when I only seem to smell their 
proximity, produce in me a slight feeling of 
nausea. 

There are people, I believe, who are affected 
in this way by the presence of cats. 



28 



THE MOON 

I WENT in and shook hands with my hostess, 
but no one else took any special notice; 
no one screamed or left the room; the quiet 
murmur of talk went on. I suppose I seemed 
like the others; observed from outside no doubt 
I looked more or less like them. 

But inside, seen from within . . . ? Or was 
it a conceivable hypothesis that we were all 
alike inside also — that all those quietly-talking 
people had got the Moon, too, in their heads? 



29 



LONGEVITY 

*TJ UT when you are as old as I am! ' I said 
ll to the young lady in pink satin. ' But I 
don't know how old you are/ that young lady 
answered almost archly. We were getting on 
quite nicely. 

'Oh I'm endlessly old; my memory goes 
back almost forever. I come out of the Middle 
Ages. I am the primitive savage we are all 
descended from; I beheve in Devil-worship, and 
the power of the Stars; I dance under the new 
Moon, naked and tattooed and holy. I am a 
Cave-dweller, a contemporary of Mastodons 
and Mammoths; I am pleistocene and neolithic, 
and full of the lusts and terrors of the great 
pre-glacial forests. But that's nothing; I am 
millions of years older; I am an arboreal Ape, 
an aged Baboon, with all its instincts; I am a 
pre-simian quadruped, I have great claws, eyes 
that see in the dark, and a long prehensile tail.' 

' Good gracious ! ' said the terrified young 
lady in pink satin. Then she turned, and for 
the rest of the dinner talked in a hushed voice 
with her other neighbour. 



30 



IN THE BUS 

AS I sat inside that crowded bus, so sad, so 
incredible and sordid seemed the fat face 
of the woman opposite me, that I interposed 
the thought of Kihmanjaro, that highest moun- 
tain of Africa, between us; the grassy slopes 
and green realms of negro kings from which 
its dark cone rises, the immense, dim, elephant- 
haunted forests which clothe its flanks; and 
above, the white crown of snow, freezing in 
eternal isolation over the palm trees and des- 
erts of the African Equator. 



31 



JUSTIFICATION 

WELL, what if I did put it on a little at 
that luncheon? Do I not owe it to 
my friends to assert now and then my claims 
to consideration; ought I always to allow myself 
to be trampled on and treated as dirt? And 
how about the Saints and Patriarchs of the 
Bible? Didn't Joseph tell of the dream in which 
his wheatsheaf was exalted; Deborah sing 
without blame how she arose a mother in Israel, 
and David boast of his triumph over the paw 
of the lion and the paw of the bear? Nay, in 
His confabulations with His chosen people, does 
not the Creator of the Universe Himself take 
every opportunity of impressing on those 
Hebrews His importance. His power, His 
glory? 

Was I not made in His image ? 



$2 



THE SAYING OF A PERSIAN POET 

ALL this hurry to dress and go out, these 
journeys in taxi-cabs^ or in trains with 
my packed bag from big railway stations — 
what keeps me going, I sometimes ask myself; 
and I remember how, in his ' Masnavi I 
Ma'navi ' or ' Spiritual Couplets,' Jalalu 'D- 
Din Muhammad Rumi says that our Desires, 
the swarm of gaudy Thoughts we pursue and 
follow, are short-lived like summer insects, and 
must all be killed before long by the winter of 
age. 



33 



MONOTONY 

OH, to be becalmed on a sea of glass all 
day; to listen all day to rain on the roof, 
or wind in pine trees; to sit all day by a water- 
fall reading exquisite, artificial, monotonous 
Persian poems about an oasis-garden where it is 
always spring — where roses bloom and lovers 
sigh, and nightingales lament without ceasing, 
and white-robed figures sit in groups by the 
running water and discuss all day, and day 
after day, the Meaning of Life. 



34 



4 DAYDREAM 

IN the cold and malicious society in which I 
live, I must never mention the Soul, nor 
speak of my aspirations. If I ever once let 
these people get a glimpse of the higher side of 
my nature, they would set on me like a pack of 
wolves and tear me in pieces. 

I wish I had soulful friends — refined Maiden 
Ladies with ideals and long noses, who live at 
Hampstead or Putney, and play Chopin with 
passion. On sad autumn afternoons I would go 
and have tea with them, and talk of the spiritual 
meaning of Beethoven's late Sonatas; or dis- 
cuss in the twilight the pathos of life and the 
Larger Hope. 



35 



PROVIDENCE 

BUT God sees me; He knows my beau- 
tiful nature, and how pure I keep amid" 
all sorts of quite horrible temptations. And 
that is why, as I feel in my bones, there is a 
special Providence watching over me; an 
Angel sent expressly from heaven to guide my 
footsteps from harm. For I never trip up or 
fall downstairs like other people; I am not run 
over by cabs and busses at street-crossings; in 
the worst wind my hat never blows off. 

And if ever any of the great cosmic processes 
or powers threaten me, I believe that God sees 
it: 'Stop it! ' He shouts from His ineffable 
Throne, ' Don't you touch my Chosen One, 
my Pet Lamb, my Beloved. Leave him alone, 
I tell you I ' 



36 



ACTION 

I AM no mere thinker, no mere creature of 
dreams and imagination. I stamp and post 
letters; I buy new bootlaces and put them in 
my boots. And when I set out to get my hair 
cut, it is with the iron face of those men of 
empire and unconquerable will, those Csesars 
and Napoleons, whose footsteps shake the 
earth. 



37 



WAITING 

WE met at Waterloo; as we were paying 
the same visit, we travelled in the 
train together; but when we got out at that 
country station, she found that her boxes 
had not arrived. They might have gone on to the 
next station; I waited with her while enquiries 
were telephoned down the line. It was a, mild 
spring evening: side by side we sat in silence 
on a wooden bench facing the platform; the 
bustle caused by the passing train ebbed away; 
the dusk deepened, and one by one the stars 
twinkled out in the serene sky. 

'How peaceful it is! ' I remarked at last. 
* Is there not a certain charm/ I went on after 
another pause, ' in waiting like this in silence 
under the stars? It's after all a little adventure, 
is it not? a moment with a certain mood and 
colour and atmosphere of its own.' 

' I often think,' I once more mused aloud, 
' I often think that it is in moments like this of 
waiting and hushed suspense, that one tastes 
most fully the savour of life, the uncertainty, 
and yet the sweetness of our frail mortal condi- 
tion, so capable of fear and hope, so dependent 
on a million accidents.' 

' Luggage ! ' I said, after another silence, 
' is it not after all absurd that minds which 
38 



WAITING 

contemplate the universe should cart about 
with them brushes and boots and drapery in 
leather boxes? Suppose all this paltry junk,' 
I said, giving my suitcase, which stood near me, 
a disdainful poke with my umbrella, ' suppose 
it all disappears, what after all does it matter? ' 
At last she spoke. 'But it's not your 
luggage,' she said, ' but mine which is lost.' 



39 



THE WRONG WORD 

WE were talking of the Universe at tea, 
and one of our company declared that 
he at least was entirely without illusions. He 
had long since faced the fact that Nature had 
no sympathy with our hopes and fears, and was 
completely indifferent to our fate. The 
Universe, he said, was a great meaningless 
machine; Man, with his reason and moral 
judgments, was the product of blind forces, 
which, though they would so soon destroy him, 
he must yet despise. To endure this tragedy of 
our fate with passionless despair, never to 
wince or bow the head, to confront the hostile 
powers with high disdain, to fix with eyes of 
scorn the Gorgon face of Destiny, to stand on 
the brink of the abyss, hurling defiance at the 
icy stars — this, he said, was his attitude, and 
it produced, as you can imagine, a very 
powerful impression on the company. As for 
me, I was completely carried away by my 
enthusiasm. 
' By Jove, that is a stunt! ' I cried. 



40 



IONS 

SELF-DETERMINATION,' one of them 
insisted. 'Arbitration! ' cried another. 

' Co-operation? ' suggested the mildest of 
the party. 

' Confiscation ! ' answered an uncompromis- 
ing female. 

I, too, became slightly intoxicated by the 
sound of these vocables. And were they not the 
cure for all our ills ? 

* Inoculation ! ' I chimed in. ' Transub- 
stantiation, Alliteration, Inundation, Flagella- 
tion and Afforestation! ' 



41 



A FIGURE OF SPEECH- 

THOUGH I sometimes lay down the law 
myself on public questions, I don't very 
much care to hear other people do it. The 
heavy talker, however, who was now holding 
forth about finance, showed such a grasp of his 
subject, and made such mincemeat of a rash 
opponent, that I thought it best, for the 
moment, to say nothing. 

' So what you allege,' he triumphed in his 
overbearing manner, ' is perfectly irrelevant. 
My withers are unwrung. It does not affect my 
position in the least.' 

And then I lightly flung my Goliath pebble. 
* Withers? ' I ingenuously asked, ' what are 
the withers, anyhow? ' 

He turned on me a glance of anger and 
contempt. ' Withers — why the withers — ' 
' It's only — only a figure of speech,' he stam- 
mered. 

*0h! ' I said, with a look at the company 
full of suggestion, ^ a figure of speech — I see.' 



42 



A SLANDER 

'TJUT I'm told you don't believe in love — ' 
|j ' Now who on earth could have told you 
that? ' I cried indignantly. ' Of course I 
believe in it — there is no one more enthusiastic 
about Love than I am. I believe in it at all 
times and seasons, but especially in the Spring. 
Why, just think of it! True-love amid the 
apple-blossoms, lovers who outwake the night- 
ingales of April, the touch of hands and lips, 
and the clinging of flower-soft limbs together; 
and all this amid the gay, musical, perfumed 
landscape of the Spring. Why, nothing, Miss 
Tomkins, could be more appropriate and 
pretty! ' 

' Haven't I said so again and again, haven't I 
published it more than once in the weekly 
papers? ' 



43 



SYNTHESIS 

IT'S awful/ I said, 'I think it simply 
wicked, the way you tear your friends to 
pieces! ' 

' But you do it yourself, you know you do! 
You analyse and analyse people, and then you 
make them up again into creatures larger than 
life—' 

' That's exactly it,' I answered gravely. 
' If I take people to pieces, I do it in order to 
put them together again better than they were 
before; I make them more real, so to speak, 
more significant, more essentially themselves. 
But to cut them up, as you do, and leave the 
fragments lying around anywhere on the floor 
— I can't tell you how cruel and heartless and 
wrong I think it! ' 



44 



THE AGE 

AGAIN, as the train drew out of the station, 
the old gentleman pulled out of his 
pocket his great shining watch; and for the 
fifth, or, as it seemed to me, the five-hundredth 
time, he said (we were in the carriage alone 
together) ' To the minute, to the very minute! 
It's a marvellous thing, the Railway; a won- 
derful age! ' 

Now I had been long annoyed by the old 
gentleman's smiling face, platitudes, and piles 
of newspapers; I had no love for the Age, and 
an impulse came on me to denounce it. 

' Allow me to tell you,' I said, ' that I 
consider it a wretched, an ignoble age. Where's 
the greatness of life? Where's dignity, leisure, 
stateliness; where's Art and Eloquence? Where 
are your great scholars, statesmen? Let me ask 
you, sir,' I cried glaring at him, ' where's 
your Gibbon, your Burke or Chatham? ' 



45 



COMFORT ^^ 

PEOPLE often said that there was nothing 
sadder, she mourned, than the remem- 
brance of past happiness; but to her it seemed 
that not the way we remembered, but the way 
we forgot, was the real tragedy of Hfe. Every- 
thing faded from us; our joys and sorrows van- 
ished alike in the irrevocable flux; we could 
not stay their fleeting. Did I not feel, she 
asked, the sadness of this forgetting, this out- 
living all the things we care for, this constant 
dying, so to speak, in the midst of Hfe? 

I felt its sadness very much; I felt quite 
lugubrious about it. ' And yet,' I said ( for 
I did really want to think of something that 
might console this lamentable lady), 'and yet 
can we not find, in this fading of recollection, 
some recompense, after all? Think, for in- 
stance — ' But what, alas, could I suggest? 

' Think,' I began once more after a moment 
of reflection, ' think of forgetting, and reading 
over and over again, all Jane Austen's novels ! ' 



46 



APPEARANCE AND REALITY 

IT is pleasant to saunter out in the morning 
sun and idle along the summer streets with 
no purpose. 

But is it Right? 

I am not really bothered by these Questions 
— the hoary old puzzles of Ethics and 
Philosophy, which lurk around the London 
corners to waylay me. I have got used to 
them; and the most formidable of all, the 
biggest bug of Metaphysics, the Problem which 
nonplusses the wisest heads on this Planet, has 
become quite a familiar companion of mine. 
What is Reality? I ask myself almost daily: 
how does the External World exist, materialised 
in mid-air, apart from my perceptions? This 
show of streets and skies, of policemen and 
perambulators and hard pavements, is it a mere 
vision, a figment of the Mind; or does it remain 
there, permanent and imposing, when I stop 
thinking about it? 

Often, as I saunter along Piccadilly or Bond 
Street, I please myself with the Berkeleian 
notion that Matter has no existence; that this 
so solid-seeming World is all idea, all appear- 
ance — that I am carried soft through space 
inside an immense Thought-bubble, a floating, 
diaphanous, opal-tinted Dream. 
47 



LONELINESS 

IS there, then, no friend? No one who hates 
Ibsen nd problem plays, and the Super- 
natural, and Switzerland and Adultery as much 
as I do? Must I live all my life as mute as a 
mackerel, companionless and uninvited, and 
never tell anyone what I think of my famous 
contemporaries? Must I plough always a 
solitary furrow, and tread the winepress alone? 



48 



THE WELSH HARP V 

WHAT charming corners one can find in 
the immense dinginess of London, and 
what curious encounters become a part of the 
London-lover's experience! The other day, 
when I walked a long way out of the Edgware 
Road, and stopped for tea at the Welsh Harp, 
on the banks of the Brent Reservoir, I found, 
beyond the modern frontage of this inn, an old 
garden adorned with sham ruins and statues, 
and full of autumn flowers and the shimmer of 
clear water. Sitting there and drinking my tea 
— alone as I thought at first, in the twilight — 
I became aware that the garden had another 
occupant; that at another table, not far from 
me, a vague and not very prosperous-looking 
woman in a shabby bonnet was sitting, with her 
reticule lying by her, also drinking tea and 
gazing at the after-glow of the sunset. An 
elderly spinster I thought her, a dressmaker 
perhaps, or a retired governess, one of those 
maiden ladies who live alone in quiet lodgings, 
and are fond of romantic fiction and solitary 
excursions. 

As we sat there, we two alone in the growing 
dusk, more than once our glances met, and 
a curious relation of sympathy and under- 
standing seemed to establish itself between us; 
49 



THE WELSH HARP 

we seemed to carry on a dialogue full of tacit 
avowals. ' Yes/ we seemed to say, as our 
eyes met over our suspended tea-cups, ' yes, 
Beauty, Romance, the Blue Bird that sings of 
Happiness — these are the things we care for — 
the only things that, in spite of everything, we 
still care for; but where can we find them in the 
dingy London streets and suburbs? ' 

' And yet,' our eyes seemed to ask each 
other, ' isn't this garden, in its shabby, preten- 
tious way, romantic; isn't it like something in a 
poem of Verlaine's; hasn't it now, in the dim 
light, a kind of beauty? And this mood of 
meditation after our excellent tea, what name, 
if we are honest, can we call it by, if we do not 
call it Happiness? ' 



SO 



MISAPPREHENSION- 

PEOPLE often seem to take me for some 
one else; they talk to me as if I were a 
person of earnest views and unalterable con- 
victions. ' What is your opinion of 
Democracy? ' they ask: ' Are you in favour of 
the Channel Tunnel? ' ' Do you believe in 
existence after Death? ' 

I assume a thoughtful attitude, and by 
means of grave looks and evasive answers, I 
conceal — or at least I hope I conceal — my dis- 
creditable secret. 



51 



THE LIFT 

WHAT on earth had I come up for? I 
stood out of breath in my bedroom, 
having completely forgotten the errand which 
had carried me upstairs, leaping two steps at a 
time. 

Gloves! Of course it was my gloves which I 
had left there. But what did gloves matter, I 
asked myself, in a world, as Dr. Johnson de- 
scribes it, bursting with misery? 

O stars and garters ! how bored I am by this 
trite, moralising way of regarding natural 
phenomena — this crying of vanity on the 
beautiful manifestations of mechanical forces. 
This desire of mine to appear out of doors in 
appropriate apparel, if it can thus defy and 
overcome the law of gravitation, if it can lift 
twelve stone of matter thirty or forty feet 
above the earth's surface; if it can do this every 
day, and several times a day, and never get out 
of order, is it not as remarkable and convenient 
in the house as a hydraulic lift ? 



S2 



SLOANE STREET 

WHEN I walk out^ middle-aged, but still 
sprightly, and still, if the truth must 
be told, with an idiot dream in my heart of 
some romantic encounter, I look at the passers- 
by, say in Sloane Street, and then I begin to 
imagine moonfaces more alluring than any I 
see in that thoroughfare. But then again vaster 
thoughts visit me, remote metaphysical 
musings; those faces like moons I imagined all 
wane as moons wane, the passers-by vanish; 
and immortal Reason, disdaining the daymoth 
she dwells with, turns away to her crystalline 
sphere of sublime contemplation. I am lost 
out of time, I walk on alone in a world of white 
silence. 



S3 



REGENT'S PARK 'r 

I WONDERED, as I passed Regent's Park 
on my way to Hampstead, what kind of 
people live in those great stuccoed terraces and 
crescents, with their solemn fagades and friezes 
and pediments and statues. People larger than 
life I picture the inhabitants of those inex- 
pensive, august, unfashionable houses, people 
with a dignity of port, an amplitude of back, 
an emphasis of vocabulary and conviction 
unknown in other regions; Dowagers and 
Dignitaries who have retired from a world no 
longer worthy of them, ex-Governors of 
Dominions, unavailing Viceroys, superannuated 
Bishops and valetudinarian Generals, who wear 
top-hats and drive around the Park in old- 
fashioned barouches — a society, I imagine it, 
not frivolous, not flippant, entirely devoid of 
double meanings; a society in which the 
memory of Queen Victoria is still revered, and 
regrets are still felt, perhaps, for the death of 
the Prince Consort. 

Or, as I have sometimes fancied, are those 
noble mansions the homes of the Victorian 
Statesmen and Royal Ladies and distinguished- 
looking Murderers who, in the near-by wax- 
work exhibition, gaze on the shallow, modern 
generation which chatters and pushes all day 
before the glassy disapprobation of their eyes? 
54 



THE AVIARY 

PEACOCK Vanities, great, crested Cocka- 
toos of Glory, gay Infatuations and 
painted Daydreams — what a pity it is all the 
Blue Birds of impossible Paradises have such 
beaks and sharp claws, that one really has to 
keep them shut up in their not too cleanly 
cages! 



55 



ST. JOHN'S WOOD f 

AS I walked on the air soon lightened; the 
Throne, the Altar and the top-hat cast 
fainter shadows, the figures of John Bright and 
Gladstone and Queen Victoria faded from my 
mind. I had entered the precincts of St. John's 
Wood; and as I went past its villas of coquet- 
tish aspect, with their gay Swiss gables, their 
frivolously Gothic or Italian or almost Oriental 
faces, the lighter aspects of existence they 
represent, the air they have of not taking life 
too seriously, began to exert their influence. 

St. John's Wood is the home in fiction of 
adventuresses and profligacy and Bohemian 
supper-parties; often have I read about those 
foreign Countesses, of unknown history and 
incredible fascination, who decoy handsome 
young officials of the Foreign Office to these 
villas, and rob them, in dim-lit, scented bed- 
rooms, of important documents. But I at least 
have never too harshly blamed these young 
diplomatists. Silent is the street as the 
mysterious brougham pauses, lovely the eyes 
that flash, and graceful the white-gloved hand 
that beckons from the carriage window; and 
how can they resist (for they are only human) 
the lure of so adventurous, so enchanting an 
invitation ? 

56 



THE GARDEN SUBURB 

I HAD often heard of the Hampstead 
Garden Suburb, and the attempt of its 
inhabitants to create an atmosphere of the 
Higher Culture, to concentrate, as it were, the 
essence of the ideal life in one region. But I 
must now confess that it was in a spirit of pro- 
fane curiosity that I walked up towards its 
courts and closes. And when I saw the notices 
of the Societies for Ethical Culture and Handi- 
crafts and Child Study, the lectures on Rein- 
carnation, the Holy Grail, the Signs of the Zo- 
diac, and the Teaching of the Holy Zoroaster, 
I am afraid I laughed. But how shallow, 
how thin this laughter soon sounded amid the 
quiet amenity, the beautiful distinction of this 
pretty paradise! It was an afternoon of 
daydreams; the autumnal light under the low 
clouds was propitious to inner recollection; and 
as I walked the streets of this ideal city, soothed 
by the sense of order and beautiful architecture 
all around me, I began to feel that I too was an 
Idealist, that here was my spiritual home, and 
that it would be a right and seemly thing to give 
up the cinemas and come and make my dwell- 
ing on this hill-top. Pictures floated before my 
eyes of tranquil days, days of gardening and 



57 



THE GARDEN SUBURB 

handicrafts and lectures, evenings spent in 
perusing the world's masterpieces. 

Although I still frequent the cinemas, and 
spend too much time gazing in at the windows 
of expensive shops, and the reverie of that 
afternoon has come to no fruition, yet I feel 
myself a better person for it: I feel that it 
marks me off from the merely cynical and 
worldly. For I at least have had a Pisgah 
sight of the Promised City; I have made its 
ideal my own, if but for an afternoon, and 
only in a daydream. 



S8 



SUNDAY CALLS 

'T T TELL, I must say! * Reason exclaimed, 

V V when we found ourselves in the street 
again. 

' What's the matter now? ' I asked uneasily. 

' Why are you always trying to be some one 
else? Why not be what you really are? ' 

' But what am I really? Again I ask you? ' 

' I do hate to see you playing the ass; and 
think how they must laugh at you! ' 

The glossy and respected image of myself 
I had left in the house behind us began to 
tarnish. 

' And what next? ' my querulous companion 
went on. * What will you be in South Kensing- 
ton, I wonder? a sad and solitary Satan, disil- 
lusioned and distinguished, or a bluff, breezy 
sailor, fond of his bottle and his boon 
companions? ' 



59 



AN ANOMALY 

WHEN people embellish their conver- 
sation with a glitter of titles, and 
drag into it self-aggrandizing anecdotes, though 
I laugh at this peacock vein in them, I do not 
harshly condemn it. Nay, since I too am hu- 
man, since I too belong to the great house- 
hold, would it be surprising if — say once or 
twice in my life — I also should have gratified 
this tickling relish of the tongue? 

No — but what is surprising, is the way that, 
as I feel, I alone always escape detection, 
always throw dust in other people's eyes. 



66 



THE LISTENER 

THE topic was one of my favourite topics of 
conversation, but I didn't at all feel on 
this occasion that it was I who was speaking. 
No, it was the Truth shining through me; the 
light of the Revelation which I had been chosen 
to proclaim and blazon to the world. No 
wonder they were all impressed by my moving 
tones and gestures; no wonder even the 
fastidious lady whom it was most difficult to 
please kept watching me with almost ecstatic 
attention. 

As a cloud may obscure the sun in his glory, 
so from some morass of memory arose a tiny 
mist of words to darken my mind for a moment. 
I brushed them aside; they had no meaning. 
Sunning myself in the mirror of those eyes, 
never, for a moment, could I credit that devil- 
suggested explanation of their gaze. 

Oh, no! that phrase I had heard, I had heard, 
was a nonsense phrase; the words, ' She mim- 
ics you to perfection,' were nothing but a bit 
of unintelligible jabber. 



6i 



ABOVE THE CLOUDS - 

* T DO so hate gossip,' she murmured. 
X 'How I hate it too! ' I heard myself 
exclaim. 

' There is so much that is good and noble in 
human nature; why not talk of that? ' 

* Why not indeed? ' I sighed. 

*I always feel that it is one's own fault if 
one dislikes people, or finds them boring.' 

' How I agree with you ! ' I cried sincerely. 

' But people are nowadays so cynical — they 
sneer at everything that makes life worth living 
— Love, Faith, Friendship — ' 

' And yet those very names are so lovely that 
even when used in mockery they shed a 
radiance — they shine like stars.' 

' How beautifully you put it! I have so en- 
joyed our talk.' I had enjoyed it too, and felt 
all the better for it, only a little giddy and out 
of breath, as if I had been up in a balloon. 



62 



THE BUBBLE 

WALKING home at night, troubled by 
the world's affairs, and with the 
National Debt crushing down my weak 
shoulders, I sometimes allow my Thoughts an 
interlude of solace. From the jar in which I 
keep my vanity bottled, I remove the cork; out 
rushes that friendly Jinn and swells up and 
fills the sky. I walk on lightly through another 
world, a world in which I cut a very different 
figure. 

I shall not describe that exquisite, evanes- 
cent universe; even for me 'tis but the bubble 
of a moment; I soon snuff it out, or of itself 
it melts in the thin air. 



63 



CAUTION' 

WITH all that I know about life, all this 
cynical and sad knowledge of what 
happens and must happen, all the experience 
and caution and disillusion stored and packed 
in the uncanny, cold, grey matter of my cere- 
brum — ^with all this inside my head, how can I 
ever dream of banging it against the Stars ? 



64 



DESIRES 

THESE exquisite and absurd fancies of 
mine — little curiosities, and greedinesses, 
and impulses to kiss and touch and snatch, and 
all the vanities and artless desires that nest and 
sing in my heart like birds in a bush — all these, 
we are now told, are an inheritance from our 
pre-human past, and were hatched long ago in 
very ancient swamps and forests. But what of 
that? I like to share in the dumb delights 
of birds and animals, to feel my life drawing its 
sap from roots deep in the soil of Nature. I am 
proud of those bright-eyed, furry, four-footed 
progenitors, and not at all ashamed of my 
cousins, the Tigers and Apes and Peacocks. 



65 



^ MOMENTS 

' A WFUL moments? Why, yes, of course,' 
jC\^ I said, ' life is full of them — let me 
think—' 

' To find other people's unposted letters in an 
old pocket; to be seen looking at oneself in a 
street-mirror, or overhead talking of the Ideal 
to a duchess; to refuse Nuns who come to the 
door to ask for subscriptions, or to be lent by a 
beautiful new acquaintance a book she has 
written full of mystical slipslop, or dreadful 
musings in an old-world garden — ' 



66 



THE EPITAPH 

'T)UT perhaps he is a friend of yours?' 
11 said my lips. ' Is it safe? ' my eyes 
asked, ' Dare I tell you what I think of him? ' 
It was safe; only silence fell upon them, 
those Sad Ones, who at my decease should 
murmur, ' He never said of any one an unkind 
word.' 'Alas, Farewell! ' breathed that boy- 
ish daydream of my funeral, as it faded. 



67 



INTERRUPTION f 

'TIFE/ said a gaunt widow, with a reputa- 

I J tion for being clever — ' life is a perpet- 
ual toothache.' 

In this vein the conversation went on: the 
familiar topics were discussed of labour trou- 
bles, epidemics, cancer, tuberculosis, and taxa- 
tion. 

Near me there sat a little old lady who was 
placidly drinking her tea, and taking no part in 
the melancholy chorus. ' Well, I must say,' 
she remarked, turning to me and speaking in an 
undertone, ' I must say I enjoy life.' 

' So do I,' I whispered. 

' When I enjoy things,' she went on, ' I 
know it. Eating, for instance, the sunshine, 
my hot-water bottle at night. Other people are 
always thinking of unpleasant things. It makes 
a difference,' she added, as she got up to go 
with the others. 

' All the difference in the world,' I answered. 

It's too bad that I had no chance for a longer 
conversation with this wise old lady. I felt 
that we were congenial spirits, and had a lot 
to tell each other. For she and I are not among 
those who fill the mind with garbage ; we make 
a better use of that divine and adorable endow- 
ment. We invite Thought to share, and by 
68 



INTERRUPTION 

sharing to enhance, the pleasures of the delicate 
senses; we distil, as it were, an elixir from our 
golden moments, keeping out of the shining 
crucible of consciousness everything that tastes 
sour. I do wish that we could have discussed at 
greater length, like two Alchemists, the theory 
and practice of our art. 



69 



THE EAR-TRUMPET 

THEY were talking of people I did not 
know. ' How do they spend their time 
there? ' some one asked. 

Then I, who had been sitting too long silent, 
raised my voice. ' Ah, that's a mysterious ques- 
tion, when you think of it, how people spend 
their time. We only see them after all in 
glimpses; but what, I often wonder, do they do 
in their hushed and shrouded hours — in all the 
interstices of their lives? ' 
' In the what? ' 

* In the times, I mean, when no one sees 
them. In the intervals.' 

' But that isn't the word you used? ' 
' It's the same thing — the interstices — ' 
Of course there was a deaf lady present. 
' What did you say? ' she inquired, holding out 
her ear-trumpet for my answer. 



70 



GUILT 

WHAT should I think of? I asked myself 
as I opened my umbrella. How should 
I amuse my imagination, that harsh, dusky, 
sloshy, winter afternoon, as I walked to Bed- 
ford Square? Should I think of Arabia or 
exotic birds; of Albatrosses, or of those great 
Condors who sleep on their outspread wings 
in the blue air above the Andes? 

But a sense of guilt oppressed me. What had 
I done or left undone? And the shadowy 
figures that seemed to menace and pursue me ? 
Yes, I had wronged them; it was again those 
Polish Poets, it was Mickiewicz, Slowacki, 
Szymonowicz, Krasicki, Kochanowski, of all 
whose works I had never read a word. 



71 



CADOGAN GARDENS 

OUT of the fog a dim figure accosted me. 
' I beg your pardon, Sir, but could you 
tell me how to get to Cadogan Gardens? ' 

* Cadogan Gardens? I am afraid I am lost 
myself. Perhaps, Sir/ I added (we two 
seemed oddly alone and intimate in that white 
world of mystery together), ' perhaps, Sir, you 
can tell me where I can find the Gardens I am 
looking for? ' I breathed their name. 

' Hesperian Gardens? ' the voice repeated. 
' I don't think I have ever heard of Hesperian 
Gardens.' 

' Oh, surely! ' I cried, ' The Gardens of the 
Sunset and the singing Maidens! ' 

' But what I am really looking for,' I con- 
fided to that dim-seen figure, ' what I am 
always hoping to find is the Fortunate Abodes, 
the Happy Orchard, the Paradise our parents 
lost so long ago.' 



72 



THE RESCUE 

AS I sat there, hopeless, with my coat and 
hat on in my bedroom, I felt I had no 
hold on life, no longer the slightest interest in 
it. To gain all that the world could give I 
would not have raised a listless finger; and it 
was entirely without intention that I took a 
cigarette, and felt for matches in my pocket. 
It was the act of an automaton, of a corpse 
that twitches a little after life has left it. 

But when I found that I hadn't any matches, 
that — hang it! — there wasn't a box of matches 
anywhere, then, with this vexation, life came 
flooding back — the warm, familiar sense of my 
own existence, with all its exasperation, and 
incommunicable charm. 



73 



CHARM 

SPEAKING of Charm; I said, ' there is 
one quality which I find very attractive, 
though most people don't notice it, and rather 
dislike it if they do. That quality is Observa- 
tion. You read of it in eighteenth-century 
books — "a Man of much Observation," they 
say. So few people,' I went on, ' really notice 
anything — they live in theories and thin dreams, 
and look at you with unseeing eyes. They take 
very little interest in the real world; but the 
Observers I speak of find it a source of inex- 
haustible fascination. Nothing escapes them; 
they can tell at once what the people they meet 
are like, where they belong, their profession, 
the kind of houses they live in. The slightest 
thing is enough for them to judge by — a tone 
of voice, a gesture, a way of putting on the 
hat—' 

' I always judge people,' one of the company 
remarked, ' by their boots. It's people's feet I 
look at first. And bootlaces now — what an aw- 
ful lot bootlaces can tell you ! ' 

As I slipped my feet back under my chair, I 
subjected my theory of Charm to a rapid 
revision. 



74 



CARAVANS 

ALWAYS over the horizon of the Sahara 
move those soundless caravans of camels, 
swaying with their padded feet across the desert 
I imagine, till in the shadowy distance of my 
mind they fade away, and vanish. 



7S 



THE SUBURBS 

WHAT are the beliefs about God in 
Grosvenor Gardens, the surmises of 
South Kensington concerning our fate beyond 
the Grave? On what grounds does life seem 
worth living in Pimlico; and how far in the 
Cromwell Road do they follow, or think they 
follow, the precepts of the Sermon on the 
Mount? 

If I can but dimly discern the ideals of these 
familiar regions, how much more am I in the 
dark about the inner life of the great outer 
suburbs. In what works of local introspection 
can I study the daydreams of Brixton, the 
curiosities and discouragements of Camberwell 
or Ealing? 

More than once I have paused before a 
suburban villa, telling myself that I had after 
all but to ring the bell, and go in and ask them. 
But alas, they would not tell me; they could not 
tell me, even if they would. 



76 



THE CONCERTO 

«TTTHAT a beautiful movement! ' she 

W murmured, as the music paused. 

* Beautiful! ' I roused myself to echo, though 
I hadn't heard a note. 

Immediately I found myself again in the 
dock; and again the trial began, that ever-re- 
curring criminal Action in which I am both 
Judge and culprit, all the jury, and the advo- 
cate on either side. 

I now pleaded my other respectable attain- 
ments and previous good character; and win- 
ning a favourable verdict, I dropped back into 
my dream, letting the violin wail unheard 
through the other movements, and the Grand 
Piano tinkle. 



77 



SOMEWHERE 

SOMEWHERE, far below the horizon, there 
is a City; some day I shall sail to find that 
sun-bright harbour; by what star I shall steer 
my vessel, or where that seaport lies, I know 
not; but somehow, through calms and storms 
and all the vague sea-noises I shall voyage, 
until at last some mountain peak will rise to 
tell me I am near my destination; or I shall 
see, some day at dusk, a lighthouse twinkling 
at its port. 



78 



-1 THE PLATITUDE . 

•T T'S after all the little things in life that 
_!_ really matter! ' I exclaimed. I was as 
much chagrined as they were flabbergasted by 
this involuntary outbreak; but I have become 
an expert in that Taoist art of disintegration 
which Yen Hui described to Confucius as the 
art of ' sitting and forgetting.' I have learnt 
to lay aside my personality in awkward 
moments, to dissolve this self of mine into the 
All Pervading; to fall back, in fact, into the 
universal flux, and sit, as I now sat there, a 
blameless lump of matter, rolled on according 
to the heavens' rolling, with rocks and stones 
and trees. 



79 



THE FETISH-^ 

ENSHRINED in a box of white paste- 
board upstairs I keep a black, ceremonial 
object; 'tis my link with Christendom and the 
world of grave custom; only on sacred 
occasions does it make its appearance, only at 
some great tribal dance of my race. To page- 
ants of Woe I convey it, or of the hugest 
Felicity: at great Hallelujahs of Wedlock, or 
at last Valedictions, I hold it bare-headed as I 
bow before altars and tombs. 



80 



THE ECHO 

NOW and then, from the other end of the 
table, words and phrases reached us as we 
talked. 

' What do they mean by complexes? ' she 
asked. ' Oh, it's only one of the catchwords 
of the day,' I answered. ' Everything's a com- 
plex just now.' 

' The talk of most people,' I went on, ' is 
simply — how shall I put it? — simply the tick- 
ing of clocks; it marks the hour, but it has no 
other interest. But I like to think for myself, 
to be something more than a mere mouthpiece 
of the age I live in — a mere sounding-board and 
echo of contemporary chatter.' 

' Just listen ! ' I said as again their raised 
voices reached our ears. 

' It's simply one of the catchwords of the 
day,' some one was shouting, ' the merest echo 
of contemporary chatter! ' 



8i 



THE SCAVENGER-^ 

*"|y y|"Y parlour-maid and cook both gave 
jW_ notice — ' 

* My stomach is not at all what it should 
be—' 

' Of course the telephone was out of order — ' 

' The coal they sent was all stones and coal- 
dust—' 

' All the electric wiring has had to be re- 
newed — ' 

' I find it impossible to digest potatoes — ' 

' My aunt has had to have eighteen of her 
teeth extracted — ' 

Am I nothing but a dust-bin or kitchen-sink 
for other people's troubles? Have I no agonies, 
no indigestions of my own? 



82 



THE HOT-BED 

IT was too much: the news in the paper 
was appalling; Central Europe and the 
Continent of Asia in a state of chaos; no com- 
fort anjrwhere; tempests in the Channel, 
earthquakes, famines, strikes, insurrections. 
The burden of the mystery, the weight of all 
this incorrigible world was really more than I 
could cope with. 

' To prepare a hot-bed for early vegetables, 
equal quantities are taken of horse-manure and 
fallen leaves; a large heap is built in alternate 
layers,' I read with passionate interest, ' of 
these materials; it is left for several days, and 
then turned over. The site of the hot-bed 
should be sheltered from cold winds, but open 
to the sunshine. Early and dwarf varieties of 
potatoes should be chosen; asparagus plants 
may be dug up from the open garden — ' 



83 



APHASIA 

*T)UT you haven't spoken a word — you 
If ought to tell us what you think.' 

' The truth is/ I whispered hoarsely in her 
unaverted ear, ' the truth is, I talk too much. 
Think of all the years I have been wagging my 
tongue; think how I shall go on wagging it, 
till it is smothered in dust! ' 

' And the worst of it is/ I went on hoarsely 
vociferating, ' the horror is that no one under- 
stands me; I can never make clear to any one 
my view of the world. I may wear my tongue 
to the stump, and no one will ever know — I 
shall go down to the grave, and no one will 
know what I mean.' 



84 



MAGIC 

*"r^0 you tliink there are ghosts?' she 
I J foamed, her eyes ablaze, ' do you 
believe in Magic? ' I had no intention of dis- 
cussing the supernatural with this spook- 
enthusiast. 

' Magic,' I mused aloud, ' what a beautiful 
word Magic is when you think of it.' 

' Are you interested in etymology? ' I asked. 
' To my mind there is nothing more fascinating 
than the derivation of words — it's full of the 
romance and wonder of real life and history. 
Think of Magic, for instance; it comes, as no 
doubt you know, from the Magi, or ancient 
priests of Persia.' 

' Don't you love our deposit of Persian words 
in English? To me they glitter like jewels in 
our northern speech. Magic and Paradise, for 
instance; and the names of flowers and gems 
and rich fruits and tissues — Tulip and Lilac 
and Jasmin and Peach and Lapis Lazuli,' I 
chanted, waving my hands to keep off the 
spooks, ' and Orange and Azure and Scarlet.' 



85 



MRS. BACKE 

MRS. BACKE would be down in a few 
minutes, so I waited in the drawing- 
room of this new acquaintance who had so 
kindly invited me to call. 

It is indiscreet, but I cannot help it; if I am 
left alone in a room, I cannot help peering 
about at the pictures and ornaments and books. 
Interiors, the habitations people make for 
their souls, are so fascinating, and tell so much; 
they interest me like sea-shells, or the nests of 
birds. 

' A lover of Switzerland,' I inferred, ' has 
travelled in the East — the complete works of 
Canon Farrar — that big bust with whiskers is 
Mendelssohn, no doubt. Good heavens! a 
stuffed cat! And that Moorish plaque is 
rather awful. Still, some of the nicest people 
have no taste — ' 

Then I saw the clock. One look at that 
pink china clock, with the face of a monkey, 
was enough. Softly from that drawing-room, 
softly I stole downstairs, and closed the front 
door of that house softly behind me. 



86 



WHISKERS 

THERE was once a young man who 
thought he saw Life as it really is, who 
prided himself on looking at it grimly in the 
face without illusions. And he went on look- 
ing at it grimly, as he thought, for a number of 
years. This was his notion of himself; but one 
day, meeting some very young people, he saw, 
reflected as it were in their eyes, a bland old 
gentleman with a white waistcoat and Victorian 
whiskers, a lover of souls and sunsets, and 
noble solutions for all problems — 

That was what he saw in the eyes of those 
atrocious young men. 



87 



THE SPELLING LESSON. 

THE anecdote which had caused the laugh- 
ter of those young people was not a thing 
to joke about. I expressed my conviction 
briefly; but the time-honoured word I made 
use of seemed unfamiliar to them — they looked 
at each other and began whispering together. 
Then one of them asked in a hushed voice, ' It's 
what, did you say? ' 

I repeated my monosyllable loudly. 

Again they whispered together, and again 
their spokesman came forward. 

' Do you mind telling us how you spell it? ' 

' I spell it with a W ! ' I shouted. 

* W-r-o-n-g — Wrong! * 



88 



JEUNESSE 

MIND you, I don't say that their eyes 
aren't bigger than ours, their eyelashes 
longer, their faces more pink and plump — and 
they can skip about with an agility of limb 
which we cannot equal. But all the same a 
great deal too much is made of these painted 
dolls. 

Think of the thinness of their conversation! 

Depicted in gaudy tints on the covers of 
paper novels they look well enough; and they 
make a better appearance in punts, I admit, 
than we do. But is that a reason why they 
should be allowed to disturb the decorum of 
tables, and interrupt with their giggles and 
squeaks our grave consultations? 



89 



V HANGING 0N4- 

IF it didn't all depend on me; if there was 
any one else to decide the destinies of Eu- 
rope; if I wasn't bound to vindicate the Truth 
on all occasions, and shout down every false- 
hood, standing alone in arms against a sea of 
error, and holding desperately in place the hook 
from which Truth and Righteousness and Good 
Taste hang as by a thread and tremble over 
the unspeakable abyss; if but for a day or two; 
— it cannot be, I cannot let Art and Civilisa- 
tion go crashing into chaos. Suppose the skies 
should fall in while I was napping; suppose 
the round world should take its chance to 
collapse into Stardust again? 



90 



SUPERANNUATION 

*TX THAT an intolerable young person! ' I 
W exclaimed, the moment he had left the 
room. ' How can one sit and listen to such 
folly? The arrogance and ignorance of these 
young men! And the things they write, and 
their pictures! ' 
'It's all pose and self-advertisement, I tell 

you — ' 

' They have no reverence! ' I gobbled. 

Now why do I do it? I know it turns the 
hair grey and stiffens the joints — why, then,^ by 
denouncing them in this unhygienic fashion, 
do I talk myself into an invalid and old fogey 
before my time? 



91 



AT THE CLUB 

*TT'S the result of Board School Educa- 
_| tion— ' 
' It's the popular Press — ' 

* It's the selfishness of the Working 
Classes — ' 

' It's the Cinema — ' 
' It's the Jews—' 

* Paid Agitators! — ' 

* The decay of faith — ' 

' The disintegration of family life — ' 

* I put it down/ I said, ' to sun-spots. If you 
want to know what I think/ I went inexorably 
on, ' if you ask me the cause of all this modern 
unrest — ' 



92 



DELAY 

I WAS late for breakfast this morning, for I 
was delayed in my heavenly hot bath by 
the thought of all the other Earnest Thinkers, 
who, at that very moment — I had good reason 
to believe it — were blissfully soaking the time 
away in hot baths all over London. 



93 



SMILES f 

WHEN people smile to themselves in the 
street, when I see the face of an ugly 
man or uninteresting woman light up (faces, it 
would seem, not exactly made for happy 
smiling), I wonder from what visions within 
those smiles are reflected; from what footlights, 
what gay and incredible scenes they gleam of 
glory and triumph. 



94 



THE DAWN 

MY Imagination has its dancing-places, 
like the Dawn in Homer; there are 
terraces, with balustrades and marble foun- 
tains, where Ideal Beings smile at my ap- 
proach; there are ilex-groves and beech trees 
in whose shadows I hold forth for ever; gar- 
dens fairer than all earthly gardens where 
groups of ladies grow never weary of listening 
to my voice. 



95 



THE PEAR-i 

'TJUT every one is enthusiastic about the 
XJ book! ' I protested. ' Well, what if they 
are? ' was the answer. 

I too am a Superior Person, but the predica- 
ment was awkward. To appear the dupe of a 
vulgar admiration, to be caught crying stale 
fish at a choice luncheon party! 

'Oh, of course! ' I hit back, 'I know it's 
considered the thing just now to despise the 
age one lives in. No one, even in Balham, will 
admit that they have read the books of the day. 
But my attitude has always been ' (what had 
it been? I had to think in a hurry), ' I have al- 
ways felt that it was more interesting, after all, 
to belong to one's own epoch; to share its dated 
and unique vision, that flying glimpse of the 
great panorama, which no subsequent genera- 
tion can ever recapture. To be Elizabethan in 
the age of Elizabeth ; romantic at the height of 
the Romantic Movement — ' 

But it was no good : I saw it was no good, so 
I took a large pear and eat it in silence. I know 
a good deal about pears, and am particularly 
fond of them. This one was a Doyenne du 
Cornice, the most delicious kind of all. 



96 



INSOMNIA 

SOMETIMES, when I am cross and cannot 
sleep, I begin an angry contest with the 
opinions I object to. Into the room they flop, 
those bat-like monsters of Wrong-Belief and 
Darkness; and though they glare at me with 
the daylight faces of bullying opponents, and 
their voices are the voices that often shout me 
down in argument, yet, in these nocturnal con- 
troversies, it is always my assertions that admit 
no answer. 

I do not spare them; it is now their turn to be 
lashed to fury, and made to eat their words. 



97 



READING PHILOSOPHY-^ 

^'T^HE abstractedness of the relation, on the 
J_ other hand, brings to consciousness no 
less strongly the foreignness of the Idea to 
natural phenomena. In its widest formula- 
tion — ' Mechanically I turned the page; but 
what on earth was it all about? Some irrele- 
vant fancy must have been fluttering between 
my spectacles and the printed paper. 

I turned and caught that pretty Daydream. 
To be a Wit — yes, while my eyes were reading 
Hegel, I had stolen out myself to amaze so- 
ciety with my epigrams. Each conversation I 
had crowned at its most breathless moment with 
words of double meaning which had echoed all 
through London. Feared and famous all my 
life-time for my repartees, when at last had 
come the last sad day, when my ashes had 
been swept at last into an urn of moderate 
dimensions, still then had I lived upon the lips 
of men; still had my plays on words been 
echoed, my sayings handed down in memoirs 
to ensuing ages. 



98 



MORAL TRIUMPH 

WHEN I see motors gliding up at night to 
great houses in the fashionable squares, 
I journey in them: I ascend in imagination 
the grand stairways of those palaces; and 
ushered with eclat into drawing-rooms of 
splendour, I sun myself in the painted smiles of 
the Mayfair Jezebels, and glitter in that world 
of wigs and rouge and diamonds hke a star. 
There I quaff the elixir and sweet essence of 
mundane triumph, eating truffles to the sound 
of trumpets, and feasting at sunrise on lobster- 
salad and champagne. 

But it's all dust, it's all emptiness and ashes; 
and I retire to an imagined desert to contend 
with Demons; to overcome in holy combats un- 
speakable temptations, and purge, by prodigious 
abstinences, my heart of base desire. For this 
is the only imperishable victory, this is the true 
immortal garland; this triumph over the predi- 
lections of our fallen nature crowns us with a 
satisfaction which the vain glory of the world 
can never give. 



99 



A VOW ' 

LIKE the Aztec Emperors of ancient 
Mexico, who took a solemn oath to make 
the Sun pursue his wonted journey, I too have 
vowed to corroborate and help sustain the Solar 
System; vowed that by no vexed thoughts of 
mine, no attenuating doubts, nor incredulity, 
nor malicious scepticism, nor h5T3ercritical anal- 
ysis, shall the great frame and first principles 
of things be compromised or shaken. 



100 



V THE SPRINGS OF ACTION ' 

'TT r HAT am I? What is man? ' 

V V I ^^^ looked into a number of books 
for an answer to this question, before I came on 
Jeremy Bentham's simple and satisfactory 
explanation: Man is a mechanism, moved by 
just so many springs of Action. These springs 
he enumerates in elaborate tables; and glancing 
over them this morning before getting up, I 
began with Charity, All-embracing Benevolence, 
Love of Knowledge, Laudable Ambition, 
Godly Zeal. Then I waited, but there was no 
sign or buzz of any wheel beginning to move in 
my inner mechanism, I looked again: I saw 
Arrogance, Ostentation, Vainglory, Abomina- 
tion, Rage, Fury, Revenge, and I was about to 
leap from my bed in a paroxysm of passions, 
when fortunately my eye fell on another set 
of motives, Love of Ease, Indolence, Procrasti- 
nation, Sloth. 



lOI 



IN THE CAGE 

WHAT I say is, what I say! ' I vocif- 
erate, as a Parrot in the great cage 
of the World, I hop, screeching, ' What I say 
is! ' from perch to perch. 



102 



SHRINKAGE 

SOMETIMES my soul floats out beyond the 
constellations; then all the vast life of the 
Universe is mine. Then again it evaporates, 
it shrinks, it dwindles; and of all that flood 
which over-brimmed the bowl of the great 
Cosmos, there is hardly enough now left to fill a 
teaspoon. 



103 



VOICES 

''XT'OU smoke too much! ' whispers the still 

X small voice of Conscience. 

' You are a failure, nobody likes you/ Self- 
contempt keeps muttering. 

'What's the good of it all? ' sighs Disillu- 
sion, arid as a breath from the Sahara. 

I can't tell you how all these Voices bore 
me; but I can listen all day with grave atten- 
tion to that suave bosom-Jesuit who keeps on 
unweariedly proving that everything I do is 
done for the public good, and all my acts and 
appetites and inclinations in the most amazing 
harmony with Pure Reason and the dictates 
of the Moral Law. 



104 



EVANESCENCE " 

HOW the years pass and life changes, how 
all things float down the stream of Time 
and vanish; how friendships fade, and illusions 
crumble, and hopes dissolve, and solid piece 
after piece of soap melts away in our hands as 
we wash them! 



105 



COMPLACENCY-/- 

DOVE-GREY and harmless as a dove, 
full of piety and innocence and pure 
thoughts, my Soul brooded unaffectedly within 
me — I was only half listening to that shrill 
conversation. And I began to wonder, as more 
than once in little moments like this of self- 
esteem I have wondered, whether I might not 
claim to be something more, after all, than a 
mere echo or compilation — might not claim in 
fact to possess a distinct personality of my 
own. Might it not be worth while, I now 
asked myself, to follow up this pleasing con- 
jecture, to retire like Descartes from the world, 
and spend the rest of life, as he spent it, try- 
ing to prove my own existence? 



1 06 



MY PORTRAIT 

FOR after all I am no amoeba, no mere sack 
and stomach; I am capable of discourse, 
can ride a bicycle, look up trains in Bradshaw; 
in fact, I am and calmly boast myself a Human 
Being — that Masterpiece of Nature, a rational, 
polite, meat-eating Man. 

What stellar collisions and conflagrations, 
what floods and slaughters and enormous 
efforts has it not cost the Universe to make 
me — of what astral periods and cosmic proc- 
esses am I not the crown and wonder? 

Where, then, is the Esplanade or Alp or 
earth-dominating Terrace for my sublime 
Statue; the landscape of palaces and triumphal 
arches for the background of my Portrait; 
stairs of marble, flung against the sunset, 
not too narrow and ignoble for me to pause 
with ample gesture on their balustraded flights? 



107 



THE RATIONALIST 

OCCULTISMS, incantations, glimpses of 
the Beyond, intimations from another 
world — all kinds of supernaturalisms are dis- 
tasteful to me; I cling to the known world of 
common sense and explicable phenomena; and 
I was much put out to find, this morning, a cab- 
balistic inscription written in letters of large 
menace on my bath-room floor. TAM HTAB 
— what could be the meaning of these cryptic 
words, and how on earth had they got there? 
Like Belshazzar, my eyes were troubled by this 
writing, and my knees smote one against the 
other; till majestic Reason, deigning to look 
downward from her contemplation of eternal 
causes, spelt backwards for me, with a pitying 
smile, the homely, harmless inscription on the 
BATH MAT, which was lying there wrong side 
up. 



io8 



THOUGHTS 

ONE Autumn, a number of years ago — I 
forget the exact date, but it was a con- 
siderable time before the War — I spent a few 
weeks in Venice in lodgings that looked out on 
an old Venetian garden. At the end of the 
garden there was a rustic temple, and on its 
pediment stood some naked, decayed, gesticu- 
lating statues — heathen gods and goddesses I 
vaguely thought them — and above, among the 
yellowing trees, I could see the belfry of a small 
convent — a convent of Nuns vowed to con- 
templation, who were immured there for life, 
and never went outside the convent walls. 

The belfry was so near that when, towards 
dusk, the convent bell began to ring against the 
sky, I could see its bell-rope and clapper mov- 
ing; andsometimes,as I sat there at my window, 
I would think about the mysterious existence, 
so near me, of those life-renouncing virgins. 

Very clearly it comes back to me, the look 
of that untidy garden, of those gesticulating 
statues, and of that convent bell swinging 
against the sky; but the thoughts that I thought 
about those Nuns I have completely forgotten. 
They were probably not of any especial in- 
terest. 



109 



PHRASES 

IS there, after all, any solace like the solace 
and consolation of Language? When I am 
disconcerted by the unpleasing aspects of 
existence, when for me, as for Hamlet, this fair 
creation turns to dust and stubble, it is not in 
Metaphysics nor in Religion that I seek reas- 
surance, but in fine phrases. The thought of 
gazing on life's Evening Star makes of ugly old 
age a pleasing prospect; if I call Death mighty 
and unpersuaded, it has no terrors for me; I am 
perfectly content to be cut down as a flower, to 
flee as a shadow, to be swallowed like a snow- 
flake on the sea. These similes soothe and 
effectually console me. I am sad only at the 
thought that Words must perish like all things 
mortal; that the most perfect metaphors must 
be forgotten when the human race is dust. 

' But the iniquity of Oblivion blindly 
scattereth her poppy.' 



no 



DISENCHANTMENT 

LIFE, I often thought, would be so different 
if I only had one; but in the meantime I 
went on fastening scraps of paper together with 
pins. 

Opalescent, infinitely desirable, in the 
window of a stationer's shop around the corner, 
gleamed the paste-pot of my daydreams. 
Every day I passed it, but every day my 
thoughts were distracted by some hope or 
disenchantment, some metaphysical perplexity, 
or giant preoccupation with the world's woe. 

And then one morning my pins gave out. I 
met this crisis with manly resolution; putting 
on my hat, I went round the corner and bought 
three paste-pots and calmly took them home. 
At last the spell was broken ; but Oh, at what a 
cost! 

Unnerved and disenchanted, I sat facing 
those pots of nauseating paste, with nothing to 
wait for now but death. 



Ill 



ASK ME NO MORE+ 

WHERE are the snows of yesteryear? 
Ask me no more the fate of Nightin- 
gales and Roses, and where the old Moons go, 
or what becomes of last year's Oxford Poets. 



112 



FAME 

SOMEWHAT furtively I bowed to the new 
Moon in Knightsbridge; the little old cere- 
mony was a survival, no doubt, of dark super- 
stition, but the Wish that I breathed was an 
inheritance from a much later epoch. 'Twas an 
echo of Greece and Rome, the ideal ambition of 
poets and heroes; the thought of it seemed to 
float through the air in starlight and music; I 
saw in a bright constellation those stately Im- 
mortals; their great names rang in my ears. 

' May I, too, — ' I whispered, incredulous, 
as I lifted my hat to the unconcerned Moon. 



"3 



NEWS-ITEMS 

IN spite of the delicacy of my moral feelings, 
and my unrelaxed solicitude for the mainte- 
nance of the right principles of conduct, I find I 
can read without tears of the retired Colonels 
who forge cheques, and the ladies of unexcep- 
tionable position who are caught pilfering furs 
in shops. Somehow the sudden lapses of re- 
spected people, odd indecorums, backbitings, 
bigamies, embezzlements, and attempted chasti- 
ties — the surprising leaps they make now and 
then out of propriety into the police-courts — 
somehow news-items of this kind do not alto- 
gether — how shall I put it? — well, they don't 
absolutely blacken the sunshine for me. 

And Clergymen? If a Clergyman slips up, 
do not, I pray you, gentle Reader, grieve on 
my account too much. 



114 



JOY 4^ 

SOMETIMES at breakfast, sometimes in a 
train or empty bus, or on the moving 
stairs at Charing Cross, I am happy; the earth 
turns to gold, and life becomes a magical adven- 
ture. Only yesterday, travelling alone to 
Sussex, I became light-headed with this sudden 
joy. The train seemed to rush to its adorable 
destination through a world new-born in splen- 
dour, bathed in a beautiful element^ fresh and 
clear as on the morning of Creation. Even the 
coloured photographs of South Coast watering- 
places in the railway carriage shone with the 
light of Paradise upon them. Brighton faced 
me; next to it divine Southsea beckoned; then 
I saw the beach at Sidmouth, the Tilly Whim 
caves near Swanage — was it in those unhaunted 
caves, or amid the tumult of life which hums 
about the Worthing bandstand, that I should 
find Bliss in its quintessence? 

Or on the pier at St. Peter Port, perhaps, in 
the Channel Islands, amid that crowd who 
watch in eternal ecstasy the ever-arriving 
never-disembarking Weymouth steamer? 



"5 



IN ARCADY 

WHEN I retire from London to my rural 
solitudes, and taste once more, as al- 
ways, those pure delights of Nature which the 
Poets celebrate — walks in the unambitious 
meadows, and the ever-satisfying companion- 
ship of vegetables and flowers — I am neverthe- 
less haunted now and then (but tell it not to 
Shelley's Skylark, nor whisper to Words- 
worth's Daffodils, the disconcerting secret) — I 
am incongruously beset by longings of which 
the Lake Poets never sang. Echoes and images 
of the abandoned City discompose my arcadis- 
ings: I hear, in the babbling of brooks, the 
delicious sound of London gossip, and news- 
boys' voices in the cries of birds. Sometimes 
the gold-splashed distance of a country lane 
seems to gleam at sunset with the posters of the 
evening papers; I dream at dawn of dinner-in- 
vitations, when, like a telephone-call, I hear the 
Greenfinch trill his electric bell. 



ii6 



WORRIES 

IN the woods about my garden and familiar 
precincts lurk the fears of life; all threaten 
me, some I may escape, of others I am the des- 
tined and devoted victim. Sooner or later — 
and yet in any case how soon! — I shall fall, as 
I have seen others fail, touched by an unseen 
hand. 

But I do not think of these Terrors often, 
though I seem to hear them sometimes moving 
in the thickets. It is the little transitory 
worries that bite and annoy me, querulous in- 
sects, born of the moment, and perishing with 
the day. 



117 



THINGS TO WRITE 

WHAT things there are to write, if one 
could only write them! My mind is 
full of gleaming thoughts; gay moods and 
mysterious, moth-like meditations hover in 
my imagination, fanning their painted wings. 
They would make my fortune if I could catch 
them; but always the rarest, those freaked 
with azure and the deepest crimson, flutter 
away beyond my reach. 

The childish and ever-baffled chase of these 
filmy nothings often seems, for one of sober 
years in a sad world, a trifling occupation. But 
have I not read of the great Kings of Persia 
who used to ride out to hawk for butterflies, nor 
deemed this pastime beneath their royal 
dignity? 



ii8 



PROPERTY 

I SHOULD be very reluctant to think that 
there was anything fishy or fraudulent 
about the time-honoured institution of Private 
Property. It is endorsed by Society, defended 
by the Church, maintained by the Law; and the 
slightest tampering with it is severely punished 
by Judges in large horsehair wigs. Oh, cer- 
tainly it must be all right; I have a feeling that 
it is all right; and one of these days I will get 
some one to explain why the world keeps on 
putting adequate sums of its currency into my 
pocket. 

But of course it's all right — 



119 



IN A FIX 

TO go, or not to go? Did I want or not 
want to bicycle over to tea with the 
Hanbury-Belchers at Pokemore? Wouldn't it 
be pleasanter to stay at home? 

I liked the Hanbury-Belchers — 

Or did I really like them? 

Still, it might be pleasant? 

But how beforehand can one ever tell? 
Experience? I was still, I felt, as ignorant of 
life as a newborn infant; experience has taught 
me nothing; what I needed was some definite, 
a priori principle, some deep conception of the 
meaning of existence, in the light of which 
problems of this kind would solve themselves at 
once. 

I leant my bicycle against the gate, and sat 
down to think the matter out. Calling to mind 
the moral debates of the old philosophers, I 
meditated on that Summum Bonum, or Sov- 
ereign Felicity of which they argued ; but from 
their disputes and cogitations what came back 
most vividly — what seemed to fall upon one al- 
most in a hush of terror — was that paralysis 
or dread balance of desire they imagined; the 
predicament in fact of that philosophic quad- 



120 



IN A FIX 

ruped, who, because he found in each of them 
precisely the same attraction, stood, unable to 
move, between two bundles of hay, until he 
perished of hunger. 



121 



VERTIGO 

NO! I don't like it; I can't approve of it; 
I have always thought it most regret- 
table that serious and ethical Thinkers like 
ourselves should go scuttling through space in 
this undignified manner. Is it seemly that I, 
at my age, should be hurled, with my books 
of reference, and bed-clothes, and hot-water 
bottle, across the sky at the unthinkable rate 
of nineteen miles a second? As I say, I don't 
at all like it. This universe of astronomical 
whirligigs makes me a little giddy. 

That God should spend His eternity — which 
might be so much better employed — in spin- 
ning countless Solar Systems, and skylarking, 
like a great child, with tops and teetotums — 
is not this a serious scandal? I wonder what 
all our circumgyrating Monotheists really do 
think of it? 



122 



THE EVIL EYE 

DRAWN by the unfelt wind in my little 
sail over the shallow estuary, I lay in 
my boat, lost in a dream of mere existence. 
The cool water glided through my trailing fin- 
gers; and leaning over, I watched the sands 
that slid beneath me, the weeds that languidly 
swayed with the boat's motion. I was the 
cool water, I was the gliding sand and the 
swaying weeds, I was the sea and sky and 
sun, I was the whole vast Universe. 

Then between my eyes and the sandy 
bottom a mirrored face looked up at me, float- 
ing on the smooth film of water over which 
I ghded. At one look from that too familiar, 
and yet how sinister and goblin a face, my 
immeasurable soul collapsed like a wrecked 
balloon; I shrank sadly back into my named 
personality, and sat there, shabby, hot, and 
very much bored with myself in my little boat. 



12 



THE EPITHET 

*/^^CC\JLT, night- wandering, enormous, 
V^_y honey-pale — ' 

The morning paper lay there unopened; I 
knew I ought to look at the news, but I was 
too busy just then trying to find an adjective 
for the Moon — the magical, unheard of, moony 
epithet, which, could I only find or invent it, 
what then would matter the sublunary quakes 
and conflicts of this negligible earth? 



124 



THE GARDEN PARTY 

'"^/"ES, I suppose it is rather a dull Garden 
j[ Party/ I agreed, though my local pride 
was a little hurt by the disdain of that vis- 
iting young woman for our rural society. 
' Still we have some interesting neighbours, 
when you get to know them. Now that fat 
lady over there in purple — do you see her? 
Mrs. Turnbull — she believes in Hell, believes 
in Eternal Torment. And that old gentleman 
with whiskers and white spats is convinced that 
England is tottering on the very brink of the 
abyss. The pie-faced lady he is talking to was, 
she asserts, Mary Queen of Scots in a pre- 
vious existence. And our Curate — we're proud 
of our Curate — he's a great cricketer, and a 
kind of saint as well. They say he goes 
out in Winter at three o'clock in the morn- 
ing, and stands up to his neck in a pond, pray- 
ing for sinners.' 



125 



WELTSCHMERZ 

'T TOW depressed you look! What on 
Jl Jl earth's the matter? ' 

' Central Europe/ I said, ' and the chaos in 
China is something awful. There's a threat- 
ened shortage, too, of beer in Copenhagen.' 

' But why should that worry you? ' 

* It doesn't. It's what I said to Mrs. Rum- 
bal — I do say such idiotic things! She asked 
me to come to see them. " I shall be delight- 
ed," I said, " as delighted — " 

' But it's your fault for lending me that book 
of Siamese translations! — "as delighted," I 
said, " Mrs. Rumbal, as a royal flamingo, when 
he alights upon a cluster of lotuses." ' 



126 



BOGEYS -- 

I REMEMBER how charmed I was with 
these new acquaintances, to whose house I 
had been taken that afternoon to call. I re- 
member the gardens through which we saun- 
tered, with peaches ripening on the sunny walls; 
I remember the mellow light on the old 
portraits in the drawing-room, the friendly 
atmosphere and tranquil voices; and how, as 
the quiet stream of talk flowed on, one sub- 
ject after another was pleasantly mirrored on 
its surface — till, at a chance remark, there was 
a sudden change and darkening, an angry swirl, 
as if a monster were raising its head above the 
waters. 

What was it about, the dreadful disputa- 
tion into which we were plunged, in spite of 
desperate efforts to clutch at other subjects? 
Was it Tariff Reform or Table-rapping, — 
Bacon and Shakespeare, Disestablishment, per- 
haps — or Anti-Vivisection? What did any of 
us know or really care about it? What force, 
what fury drove us into saying the stupid, in- 
tolerant, denunciatory things we said; that 
made us feel we would rather die than not say 
them? How could a group of humane, polite 
and intelligent people be so suddenly trans- 
formed into barking animals? 
127 



BOGEYS 

Why do we let these Abstractions and im- 
placable Dogmatisms take possession of us, 
glare at each other through our eyes, and fight 
their frenzied conflicts in our persons? Life 
without the rancours and ever-recurring bat- 
tles of these Bogeys might be so simple, 
friendly, affectionate and pleasant! 



128 



LIFE-ENHANCEMENT 

I WAS simply telling them at tea the details 
of my journey — how late the train had been 
in starting, how crowded the railway carriage, 
how I had mislaid my umbrella, and nearly 
lost my Gladstone bag. 

But how I enjoyed making them listen, what 
a sense of enhanced existence I found it gave 
me (and to think that I have pitied bores!) 
to force my doings, my interests, my universe, 
with my bag and umbrella, down their throats! 



129 



ECLIPSE - 

A MILD radiance and the scent of flowers 
filled the drawing-room, whose windows 
stood open to the summer night. I thought 
our talk delightful; the topic was one of my 
favourite topics; I had much that was illu- 
minating to say about it, and I was a little 
put out when we were called to the window to 
look at the planet Jupiter, which was shining 
in the sky just then, we were told, with great 
brilliance. 

In turns through a telescope we gazed at 
that planet: I thought the spectacle over-rated, 
but said nothing. Not for the world, not for 
any number of worlds would I have wished 
them to guess why I was displeased with that 
glittering star. 



130 



THE PYRAMID 

TTpO read Gibbon/ I said as we paced that 

j[ terrace in the sunshine, ' to peruse his 
metallic, melancholy pages, and then forget 
them; to re-read and re-forget the Decline and 
Fall; to fill the mind with that great, sad, 
meaningless panorama of History, and then to 
watch it fade from the memory as it has faded 
from the glass of time — ' 

As she turned to me with a glance full of 
enthusiasm, ' What is so enchanting,' I asked 
myself, ' as the dawn of an acquaintance with 
a lovely woman with whom one can share one's 
thoughts? ' 

But those dawns are too often false dawns. 

It was her remark about History, how 
she believed the builders of the Great Pyramid 
had foreseen and foretold many events of Mod- 
ern History, which made a gigantic shadow, a 
darkness, as of Egypt, loom between us on that 
terrace. 



131 



THE FULL MOON 

SUDDENLY one night, low above the trees, 
we saw the great, amorous, unabashed 
face of the full Moon. It was an exhibition 
that made me blush, feel that I had no right 
to be there. ' After all these millions of years, 
she ought to be ashamed of herself! ' I cried. 



132 



LUTON 

IN a field of that distant, half-neglected farm, 
I found an avenue of great elms leading 
to nothing. But I could see where the wheat- 
bearing earth had been levelled into a terrace; 
and in one corner there were broken, overgrown, 
garden gateposts, almost hid among great strag- 
gling trees of yew. 

This, then, was the place I had come to see. 
Here had stood the great palladian house or 
palace, with its terraces, and gardens, and ar- 
tificial waters; this field had once been the 
favourite resort of Eighteenth-Century Fash- 
ion; the Duchesses and Beauties had driven 
hither in their gilt coaches, and the Beaux and 
Wits of that golden age of English Society. 
And although the house had long since van- 
ished, and the plough had gone over its pleas- 
ant places, yet for a moment I seemed to see 
this fine company under the green and gold 
of that great avenue; seemed to hear their 
gossiping voices as they passed on into the 
shadows. 



133 



yTHE DANGER OF GOING TO CHURCH^ 

AS I came away from the Evening Service, 
walking home from that Sabbath adven- 
ture, some neighbours of mine passed me in 
their motor, laughing. Were they laughing at 
me? I wondered uneasily; and as I sauntered 
across the fields I vaguely cursed those misbe- 
lievers. Yes, yes, their eyes should be dark- 
ened, and their lying lips put to silence. They 
should be smitten with the botch of Egypt, and 
a sore botch in the legs that cannot be healed. 
All the teeth should be broken in the mouths 
of those bloody men and daughters of back- 
sliding; their faces should become as flames, 
and their heads be made utterly bald. Their 
little ones should be dashed to pieces before 
their eyes, and brimstone scattered upon their 
habitations. They should be led away with 
their buttocks uncovered; they should stagger 
to and fro as a drunken man staggereth in his 
vomit. 

But as for the Godly Man who kept his 
Sabbaths, his should be the blessings of those 
who walk in the right way. ' These blessings ' 
— the words came back to me from the Even- 
ing Lesson — ' these blessings shall come upon 
thee, and overtake thee.' And suddenly, in the 
mild £:ummer air, it seemed as if, like a swarm 
134 



THE DANGER OF GOING TO CHURCH 

of bees inadvertently wakened, the blessings of 
the Bible were actually rushing after me. 
From the hot, remote, passionate past of He- 
brew history, out of the Oriental climate and 
unctuous lives of that infuriate people, gross 
good things were coming to overwhelm me with 
benedictions for which I had not bargained. 
Great oxen and camels and concubines were 
panting close behind me, he-goats and she- 
goats and rams of the breed of Bashan. My 
barns should burst their doors with plenty, 
and all my paths drop fatness. My face should 
be smeared with the oil of rejoicing; all my 
household and the beasts of my household 
should beget and bear increase; and as for the 
fruit of my own loins, it should be for multi- 
tude as the sands of the sea and as the stars 
of heaven. My little ones should be as olive 
plants around my table; sons and daughters, 
and their sons and daughters to the third and 
fourth generation, should rise up and call me 
blessed. My feet should be dipped in butter, 
and my eyes stand out with fatness; I should 
flourish as the Cedar of Lebanon that bringeth 
forth fruit in old age. 



135 



THE SONNET- 

IT came back to me this rainy afternoon for 
no reason, the memory of another after- 
noon long ago in the country, when, at the end 
of an autumn day, I had stood at the rain- 
dashed window and gazed out at the dim land- 
scape; and as I watched the yellowing leaves 
blown about the garden, I had seen a flock of 
birds rise above the half-denuded poplars and 
wheel in the darkening sky. I had felt there 
was a mysterious meaning in that moment, and 
in that flight of dim-seen birds an augury of 
ill-omen for my Hfe. It was a mood of Au- 
tumnal, minor-poet melancholy, a mood with 
which, it had occurred to me, I might fill out 
the rhymes of a lugubrious sonnet. 

But my Sonnet about those birds — those 
Starlings, or whatever they were — will, I fear, 
never be written now. For how can I now 
recapture the sadness, the self-pity of youth? 

Alas! What do the compensations of age 
after all amount to? What joy can the years 
bring half so sweet as the unhappiness they 
take away? 



136 



WELTANSCHAUUNG -^ 

WHEN, now and then, on a calm night I 
look up at the Stars, I reflect on the 
wonders of Creation, the unimportance of this 
Planet, and the possible existence of other 
worlds like ours. Sometimes it is the self- 
poised and passionless shining of those serene 
orbs which I think of; sometimes Kant's phrase 
comes into my mind about the majesty of the 
Starry Heavens and the Moral Law; or I re- 
member Xenophanes gazing at the broad fir- 
mament, and crying, ' All is One ! ' and thus, 
in that sublime exclamation, enunciating for 
the first time the great doctrine of the Unity 
of Being. 

But these Thoughts are not my thoughts; 
they eddy through my mind like scraps of old 
paper, or withered leaves in the wind. What I 
really feel is the survival of a much more primi- 
tive mood — a view of the world which dates in- 
deed from before the invention of language. 
It has never been put into literature; no poet 
has sung of it, no historian of human thought 
has so much as alluded to it; astronomers in 
their glazed observatories, with their eyes glued 
to the ends of telescopes, seem to have had no 
notion of it. 

But sometimes, far off at night, I have heard 
a dog howling it at the Moon. 
137 



THE ALIENS 

THE older I grow, the more of an a^ien I 
find myself in the world; I cannot get 
used to it, cannot believe that it is real. I 
-think I must have been made to live on some 
other Star. Or perhaps I am subject to hallu- 
cinations and hear voices; perhaps what I seem 
to see is delusion and doesn't happen; perhaps 
people don't really say the things I think I 
hear them saying. 

Ah, some one ought to have told me when I 
was young, I should certainly have been told of 
the horrible songs that are sung in drawing- 
rooms; they ought to have warned me about 
the great fat women who suddenly get up and 
bellow out incredible recitations. 



138 



HYPOTHESES^- 

I GOT up with Stoic fortitude of mind in the 
cold this morning; but afterwards, in my 
hot bath, I joined the school of Epicurus. I 
was a Materialist at breakfast; after it an Ideal- 
ist, as I smoked my first cigarette and turned 
the world to transcendental vapour. But when 
I began to read the Times I had no doubt of 
the existence of an external world. 

So all the morning and all the afternoon 
opinions kept flowing into and out of the re- 
ceptacle of my mind ; till, by the time the enor- 
mous day was over, it had been filled by most 
of the widely-known Theories of Existence, and 
then emptied of them. 



139 



THE ARGUMENT ' 

THIS long speculation of life, this thinking 
and syllogising that always goes on in- 
side me, this running over and over of hypothe- 
sis and surmise and supposition — one day this 
infinite Argument will have ended, the debate 
will be forever over, I shall have come to an 
indisputable conclusion, and my brain will be 
at rest. 



THE END 



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